The sun was rising, pulling the castle from the shadows. Harry felt she had stepped inside a monochrome picture; everything around her white or black. She hunched her shoulders and scuffed the ground. This was Hogwarts. This was home. In ruins.
The birds were earnestly chipping; the wind was racing up the still standing walls. It was still eerily silent. She wrapped her arms around her torso, her fingers clutching her faded red jumper. Around the cuffs the wool was unravelling.
Taking out her new wand, Ash and Dragon heartstring, she gave it an experimental flick. It hissed at her. Harry scowled, wondering for the hundredth time if Ollivander had made a mistake. He was getting old. She refused to think of the other option: that she didn't deserve a loyal wand after everything she had done. After having her holly wand break.
During the extent of the war, she had been using Malfoy's wand, having no time to get another wand especially fitted to her. She was ashamed to admit it had worked better than this ash stick.
Angrily she stuffed it back up her sleeve.
"Wand trouble Potter?" a familiar voice sneered.
Harry whipped around. He was standing too close to have gone unnoticed so long. She idly wondered if he was part vampire and had learned to shadow walk. He looked more like a shadow than a person, in his grey robes, grey eyes, pale skin and near colourless hair.
"Malfoy." She wrinkled her nose, but straighten her spine, "What are you doing here?"
Malfoy gave a long-suffering sigh; he would probably have rolled his eyes if he was anyone else. "I'm sure even you can figure that out."
McGonagall had sent out letters yesterday to all Hogwarts students asking for help in rebuilding the place. Harry imagined most of it would be manual labour, since she doubted many people had building expertise; therefore, she was surprised that Malfoy had turned up.
"I didn't think Malfoys got their hands dirty."
He flushed, "I didn't think the illustrious girl-who-lived would be able to get away from her fans – seems like we're both wrong."
"It's the girl-who-won now." She shot back smirking. She hated the name, both names, but she knew better than to tell Malfoy that. Any weakness would be exploited mercilessly.
"Really? What have you won? A ruined castle, a haunted world? Don't be naïve Potter, in a war no one ever wins." Malfoy spat, bitter and older than his not eighteen years.
"I won." Harry insisted, because despair was a constant neighbour, a ground that was threatening to swallow her whole, and she needed some platitude to keep it at bay. "I won the chance to live and rebuild and heal." She dug her nails into her palms, stretching the newly healed scar across her knuckles. She desperately wanted to believe it.
Malfoy snorted, "How sickeningly sentimental, but whatever makes you sleep at night."
Harry received his words like a punch in the gut, because she did. She said the words so she could sleep at night, or at least snatch a few hours. Malfoy always knew which buttons to push and she hated him for it. She wanted to hex him, but she didn't stand a chance with her temperamental new wand.
Just then they both heard a crack and they turned to see McGonagall striding towards them.
"Miss Potter, you are here early."
Harry forced herself to smile and forget Malfoy's words. "I'm excited to get started." The fact that she couldn't sleep and pretending too had been driving her crazy had nothing whatsoever to do with it. She didn't dare look at Malfoy, in case her thoughts were echoed back in his face.
McGonagall smiled and nodded, before turning to Malfoy with a decidedly cooler air and acknowledged him with a short nod. "Malfoy. Good of you to come."
"McGonagall, my pleasure."
McGonagall's eye twitched, whether from the lack of 'professor' or because his response was obviously sarcastic Harry didn't both to ponder and sympathised completely. Annoying didn't even begin to describe Malfoy.
They were standing in what used to be the great hall. Looking up you still saw the sky, the sun and clouds, but this wasn't a clever illusion anymore. The ceiling had collapsed from one too many misaimed blasting curses, shattering the ceiling and the illusion.
The long tables were all split in two, or three or four pieces and the benches were missing legs. Harry tried not to look too closely, especially at the dark stains on the floor, and tried even harder to forget which stains were her doing.
"Before the builders start on the reconstruction, we have to remove all the loose rubble. All the loose stones and gravel are to be moved down by the quidditch pitch – they might be able to be used again once we start rebuilding."
Malfoy lazily flicked his wand and directed a stream of loose stones from the hall.
Harry bit her lip, "Wingardium leviosa." She whispered quietly. She had been able to do wordless magic since fourth year, but this wand wasn't her Holly wand or Malfoy's Hawthorne wand, this wand was Ash and stubborn as the day was long. She wasn't giving it any excuses to misinterpret her will.
The boulder she had pointed at shot up in the air and came down just as quickly. It hadn't moved a centimetre.
Malfoy snickered.
She flicked her wand angrily in frustration, her usually short temper already at an end. A stone sailed throw the air and caught Malfoy in the gut, causing him to land heavily on his butt.
Harry laughed, even though she hadn't meant it. At least her wand and she agreed on the fact that Malfoy was a prat.
Malfoy jumped up quickly, face red and sent a spell her way. Harry ducked.
"Children! No duelling in Hogwarts. The structure is unsound enough without your help."
"Yes, Professor McGonagall," Harry said regretfully, although it was probably for the best; with the way her wand had been acting, the duel wouldn't have ended in her favour. She frowned. Without a working wand she was useless. She used to be the best dueller in her year, in most of the upper years as well, and now she couldn't even caste a proper levitation spell. It just needed time, she consoled herself, she had only gotten the wand yesterday, it just needed time to adjust to her.
In the meantime, maybe she could use some runes to get the job done. She had never been good at runes. She hadn't wanted to take the class, and slept through many lectures as a silent protest. But she wasn't going to stand around uselessly as Hogwarts was rebuilt. It was her home and she wanted to have a hand in rebuilding the place, making it better than it ever was before. She brushed aside some pebbles and pulled a piece of chalk from her pocket. Kneeling, she began to draw.
"What are you doing?" Malfoy asked scathingly when he returned to the hall for the next bunch of rubble.
"What does it look like?" She shot back just as sarcastically.
He scanned the hastily sketched runes she had drawn, and snorted, "That's never going to work without a grounding rune."
"Shut up Malfoy – or I'll knock you down again."
"Please, that was pure luck."
"I get lucky a lot." Harry stated, looking up to stare him in the eye.
"No matter how lucky you are that array's never going to work." He taunted and walked away before Harry could respond.
"Pompous git." She muttered, but added the grounding rune. The idea was to make a temporary portal to move inanimate objects short distances. Without a grounding rune, an object could disappear from the starting point but never arrive at the intended destination. She was slightly ashamed that Malfoy had been able to interpret her array at one glance, when it had taken her ages to remember the right runes and how to place them correctly. Luckily, she wouldn't need runes as an auror. At least it wasn't a requirement.
All she had to do to complete the array was sketch the arrival runes at her intended destination, in this case the quidditch pitch.
She jumped to her feet, wiping the dust from the knees of her worn jeans. More students had arrived along with the sun, she noticed as she jogged to the quidditch pitch.
"Hey Harry!" an Irish voice called.
"Seamus – how's it going?"
"Ah ye know. Good mostly – me mam's still in hospital."
Harry nodded, she had only been cleared from the hospital a week ago herself, "She'll get there." Harry wasn't good at comforting.
"Yeah I know – so what about you?" Seamus asked, determinedly upbeat.
"I think I've found a much better way to clear the hall – want to help?" She grinned mischievously. Seamus was always up for some mischief so he readily consented. In her Hogwarts days, whenever Ron and she needed another wand for their latest plot or scheme, Seamus was always the first port of call. Harry wished it was Ron though. Ron and she were a team, but today he was helping George out in the joke shop. She understood. George needed him more than she did. She still wished he was here.
A few minutes later the last runes were drawn and they were back in the Great Hall, Seamus methodically moving rubble to the centre of the rune array and Harry smoothly activating the runes. It was something even her wayward wand couldn't bungle up, since the wand didn't need to shape any magic just direct magical energy into the array. They had enlisted Dean's help in clearing the stones as soon as they arrived on the quidditch pitch.
She saw Malfoy glancing their way once or twice, and she determined to ignore him because it would make him angrier than any words she could think of. Her determination didn't last long. Unable to help herself she demanded, "What?"
"Oh nothing – it's nothing." Malfoy insisted in a voice that said quite plainly that there was indeed something.
She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows and stared at him. She had an impressive stare.
"Just seems like an awful lot of work for a task that could be accomplished so easily with a flick of a wand."
Harry was unsure whether Malfoy was just taunting her, or if he had guessed that her wand was malfunctioning and was taunting her to admit that fact. Either way Harry wasn't going to admit anything to the git.
"It's more efficient. You're just narked you didn't think of it yourself."
"Right – it took you forever to think up that rune array, and you need how many people to make it work? Two in the great hall and one to remove the stones when they arrive at the quidditch pitch? – You can't do anything the normal way can you – oh no you're the great Harry Potter who has to incessantly prove just how much better than everyone else she is."
"Merlin Malfoy! Stop being such a bitter old man. My way is better – and I'll prove it to you, let's have a race."
"Its three against one – that's hardly fair." He dismissed.
"We'll make it so that we have to transport at least three times the amount of rocks."
He pretended to think about it, but Harry already knew he wouldn't say no, he just liked being dramatic.
"What are the stakes?" He finally asked.
Harry shrugged, the stakes weren't as interesting as the winning, "Bragging rights?"
Malfoy scoffed, "Gryffindors – no imagination."
Malfoy seemed to think that 'Gryffindors' was an insult in and of itself, and could be used in pretty much any situation – from critiquing her dress sense and manners to her intelligence or magical expertise. Unfortunately for him, Slytherin House boasted such fine specimens of wizard-hood as Crabbe and Goyle, so Harry didn't think he had a leg to stand on and treated all such comments with as much equanimity as a duck would getting wet.
"Fine – I'll owe you one favour to be redeemed later – but I do reserve the right to refuse if it's really ghastly." Harry rolled her eyes.
This seemed to satisfy him for he moved on, "Time limit?"
"Twenty minutes."
"Ten."
"Fifteen." Harry knew that the longer the race, the more likely Malfoy would be of getting tired and slowing down, whereas the physical exertion of her method was minimal.
"Fine."
"McGonagall will judge."
"What are you a muggle? I think we can determine the win between ourselves like civilized wizards." He demanded.
"I'm a witch." Harry retorted, but didn't push the issue. It was clear that Malfoy wasn't McGonagall's favourite person. Malfoy might not have a dark mark, and there might not be any concrete evidence against him, but the war had just ended and no one could forget that he hadn't fought, or if he had it hadn't been on their side.
"Really?" He feigned surprise.
Harry flushed. Her hair was short and messy and her chest was practically no-existent. She didn't care. Mostly. Not now at least with a competition to win. Her blood was already starting to race, all her nerves jumping to life and time itself slowing to her command. She felt alive. It was June, the sun was shining, the wind pulling her hair, and nothing could matter but the next fifteen minutes.
Harry turned away, "Seamus tell Dean we're racing." Because trading insults with Malfoy was fun, but winning was even better.
Malfoy didn't start levitating rocks at once, he climbed up a part of the broken castle wall so that he had a clear view of the quidditch pitch. Then he brought up his wand and the boulders started moving, Indian file, down to their destination, bobbing along like apples in a stream.
Malfoy looked like a grand conductor, high on his perch with the sun behind him, and the rocks his musicians. The amount of concentration involved to levitated such a large amount of rocks was impressive to put it mildly, but Harry didn't have time to stare.
Draco chose the bigger rocks to levitate since it was hard to keep his concentration divided between so many objects. Harry and her team took a different approach. They could only transport a certain volume at one time, so Harry instructed Seamus to levitate the smaller rocks onto the rune array, so that she could activate more rocks at one time.
Once the fifteen minutes were up, both Harry and Malfoy raced to the pitch. Harry began counting her boulders – 103 – before moving on to Malfoy's pile. He had 32.
"We won!" she exclaimed. 32 times 3 after all was only 96.
"I beg your pardon." Malfoy interrupted, as Seamus and she were exchanging high fives.
"Yes?" Harry scowled.
"Your maths skills are clearly lacking, since it's obvious that I am the winner. You clearly agreed that your team needed 3 times my amount in order to win, or are you changing your mind?"
"No, those were the terms but we did transport more than 3 times the amount you did."
Malfoy scoffed again, "According to my calculations you have 1340 stone of rock and I have 469 stone. 469 multiplied by 3 is 1407 stone which is clearly more than your measly 1340 stone."
"What? Are you seriously going by weight?"
"Of course."
"That's ridiculous!"
"What were you measuring by?"
"Number of rocks of course." Harry glared. Malfoy glared back. Trust Malfoy to make everything difficult. She should have known that she should have gone over the terms of the bet at least a dozen times.
"You stated the amount of rocks we transported, that clearly implies weight!"
"No, it doesn't! Amount means number!"
Seamus and Dean looked at each other and decided this would be an excellent time to grab a butterbeer down at Hogsmead.
AN So Malfoy's stone = 10 pounds. Apparently stone is an outdated way of measuring weight, so I thought it was perfect of the wizarding world. I'm not an expert, I just looked it up on wiki so it might not be accurate, since it was also said 1 stone could be anywhere from 5 to 40 pounds. I just choose 10 pounds for convenience's sake. R&R!
